The Off-Topic LoungeAPPROPRIATE FAMILY-FRIENDLY TOPICS ONLY - READ THE RULES!This forum is for posting anything (excluding topics prohibited by the forum rules) that's unrelated to email. General discussions, in other words.

Is it legally OK to post links to videos on YouTube on your social media accounts, eg in a Facebook post or in a tweet?

I would mainly want to share some songs I adore with friends, hoping they'd like them too and discover a new band that way. However, I am not sure if by posting a link to the video on YouTube , you're not guilty of copyright infringement and illegal spreading of music?

To further complex the issue: not all videos on YouTube are posted by the actual artists. OK, if it's a Vevo account you know, and in many cases you can see if the video was posted by the artist (or their management). But in some cases we talk about videos uploaded by fans, either because the actual video was never uploaded by the band themselves (sometimes because the band is no longer existing, eg The God Machine, Aphrodite's Child, Coil, ...) or sometimes because it's simply not clear whether the uploader is part of the team of the artists or just a fan.

So is there any restriction regarding sharing a link to a YouTube video in a Facebook timeline post and/or in a tweet?

Not necessarily. YouTube also has rules about copyright violations, and still people still upload a large amount of fan made videos to songs they don't own the rights to. Only a minority of those videos is eventually taken down due for that reason, some of those fan made videos float around for years (either because of remaining unnoticed by the people holding the rights, or because the artists see it as good promotion and don't mind)

Hence, the share button doesn't automatically mean it becomes OK to share any given video on YouTube. Hence my question.